Good Vibrations Festival

Well, this was actually from a couple of weeks ago, but I just haven't got round to put these pics up for everyone. the festival itself was a lot of fun, and the weather was absolutely roasting hot. Music wise, there were some good bands but to be honest nothing truly outstanding - Jurassic 5 were rather ridiculously stuck in a pretty small side tent, whilst local electro pop outfit Sneaky Sound System were put on the main stage, and despite much hype, Beastie Boys were actually a bit rubbish. I guess they're just a bit too old to kick it anymore :( they keep stopping to do slow bosa nova jazz numbers all the time, which kind of ruined the build set. So, overall, I'd say Snoop Dogg was actually the highlight, coming on as he did as the surprise mystery guest (he even did some stuff with the Beasties, which was awesome). Check out the picture of his ridiculously bling bling mic grill... And well, after that, what better way to end the night then to go to a uv/neon party at the infamous Clubb 77 - dirty electroclash disco ahoy!

Why Rudy G won't be President...

...hell, he won't even make it through the primaries when they get a load of this

Iraqi: The Hidden Story

Hey guys, I highly recommend everyone watch this Channel 4 documentary by Jon Snow. This is what isn't being shown on TV. We continue to sanitise and hide the death, brutality and bloodbath to console ourselves. Its a disgrace.

The Weekend Economist - #2 - Road (Pricing) Rage

As most of you will probably remember, I've been trying to write a bit more journo type stuff, and got a short piece put up on The Weekend Economist. Well, I've managed to get another writen, so please, give it a read and let me know your thoughts!

Road (Pricing) Rage

It sometimes seems as if things couldn’t get any worse for poor Tony Blair; an endless quagmire in Iraq, embarrassing police interviews, John Prescott (need I elaborate?) and now yet again, the British public have once again voiced there disapproval – over 1.65 million people have signed an online e-petition, ending today, to ‘scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy’.

The Great British Motorist, whose rage was last expressed rather visibly in the national fuel protests in 2000, is something of a civil institution in the UK, to be roundly whipped into a frenzy by various tabloid and/or political forces, as and when deemed necessary. We, unlike other Europeans, have had a long history of being rather unwilling to accept that motoring and fuel prices should in fact reflect the true socio-ecological costs of the activity itself. Perhaps we feel short changed in the ‘Blood for Oil’ War, with so little to show for it in at the pumps.

What startled me most was, however, to receive one of the multitude of emails urging people to sign from my mother. Far from being merely the bugbear of suburban bourgeois motorist (and the Conservative Party), this policy seems to have riled the nation up and down the land – either on the grounds cost or privacy (as Peter Roberts, author of the petition, has stated, “the idea of tracking every vehicle at all times is sinister and wrong…Road pricing is already here with the high level of taxation on fuel. The more you travel - the more tax you pay.”)

The rage was perhaps inevitable; but then, perhaps the short sightedness and intellectual papacy underpinning it was also to be expected. Yes, there are serious privacy considerations inherent with the proposal – who will have access to the data? How will it be regulated? What safe guards will be in place? On closer inspect, however, the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in Britain are ready to accept ID cards, phone tapping, curfews, electronic tagging, the opening of private mail and extensions to detention without charge to fight the rather ethereal threat from the Al-Qaeda bogeyman proves just how hollow this argument is in reality.

Still, bloggers screamed a call to arms, demanding to know “are we prepared to be taxed for the privilege of going about our business? At what point do we turn round and say that something is a basic right rather than a privilege, and as such not something we expect to be taxed for?” In the process, of course, such outspoken opposition illustrated in fact the very reasons why such a policy must, in fact, be implemented. Motoring, at least as it has been historically conceived, really is a privilege, not a right.

Without some kind of action, congestion on Britain’s roads is set to increase by 25% in less then a decade, in a country that has already seen road transport grow by a shocking 81% since 1980. We face a major transport crisis, made all the more significant by the Stern Report last year that underscored the very grave financial (let along human, social and environmental) costs of unrestrained global warming (of which transport accounts for 1/5^th of all CO2 emitted.) The transport study, led by Sir Rod Eddington, recommended the road pricing of around £1.28 per mile in direct recognition of this fact - "the world needs to face up to the reality of climate change, and that implies learning to live within a carbon-constrained future.” People need to "feel the consequences of their decisions," and this is, contrary to rage blinded motorists, neither patronizing nor authoritarian. The European Carbon Trading Scheme is already in place, and it is only a matter of time before this is extended to private individuals in the form of carbon credits.

It is, quite frankly, ridiculous to assert, as Austin Williams did in the Telegraph, that transport policy should follow a ‘predict and provide’ approach – endlessly expanding the road system is not a sustainable solution. Nor is it morally or intellectually honest to dismiss Eddington’s conclusion that “some of the best projects are small-scale, such as walking and cycling.” Indeed, such changes in habits – requiring as they do first and foremost a change in mentality – will only be achieved with both the carrot and the financial stick. As the Prime Ministers Official Spokesman pointed out, “people did feel strongly about this issue, but feeling strongly was not a substitute for coming up with practical proposals.”

The supreme irony, of course, was the in accusing Eddington of ‘Stalinist’ penny pinching, (asking, “since when have we ever reduced politics to such simple fiscal equations,”) Williams himself articulated the crassest form of financial selfishness on behalf of the British Motorist, urging them to “downplay the so-called harm that carbon does” and, despite all the scientific evidence available, stress that global warming “a potential problem.” Whilst that approach may save many motorists money, and yes, quite possibly a significant amount, it is tantamount to mortgaging our future and gambling with the very sustainability and prosperity of our children, for they are the ones who will have to deal with our legacy of an infatuation with boundless mobility and endless consumption.

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” Albert Einstein

Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society

Whilst this isn't my article (you can link to the original here) I wanted to bring this all to your attention. I've been reading a few different things by James Howard Kunstler, and whilst I consider him a little too doom and gloom at times (plus, slightly wonky with his economics), he's got a good point - we are entering Peak Oil, and we have still got our heads stuck far too deep in the sand. We need to wake up to the reality that the world is going to dramatically change, and pretty soon too. So, enjoy and comment on your thoughts!

Editor's Note: James Howard Kunstler is a leading writer on the topic of peak oil the problems it poses for American suburbia. Deeply concerned about the future of our petroleum dependent society, Kunstler believes we must take radical steps to avoid the total meltdown of modern society in the face looming oil and gas shortages. For background on this topic, read Kunstler's essay, "Pricey Gas, That's Reality."

Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions" to our looming energy crisis. So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here are my suggestions:

1. Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

2. We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

3. We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami ...) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.

4. We have to move things and people differently. This is the sunset of Happy Motoring (including the entire US trucking system). Get used to it. Don't waste your society's remaining resources trying to prop up car-and-truck dependency. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient. Need something to do? Get involved in restoring public transit. Let's start with railroads, and let's make sure we electrify them so they will run on things other than fossil fuel or, if we have to run them partly on coal-fired power plants, at least scrub the emissions and sequester the CO2 at as few source-points as possible. We also have to prepare our society for moving people and things much more by water. This implies the rebuilding of infrastructure for our harbors, and also for our inland river and canal systems -- including the towns associated with them. The great harbor towns, like Baltimore, Boston, and New York, can no longer devote their waterfronts to condo sites and bikeways. We actually have to put the piers and warehouses back in place (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Right now, programs are underway to restore maritime shipping based on wind -- yes, sailing ships. It's for real. Lots to do here. Put down your Ipod and get busy.

5. We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.

6. We will have to make things again in America. However, we are going to make less stuff. We will have fewer things to buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain is coming down on the endless blue-light-special shopping frenzy that has occupied the forefront of daily life in America for decades. But we will still need household goods and things to wear. As a practical matter, we are not going to re-live the 20th century. The factories from America's heyday of manufacturing (1900 - 1970) were all designed for massive inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have already been demolished. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.

7. The age of canned entertainment is coming to and end. It was fun for a while. We liked "Citizen Kane" and the Beatles. But we're going to have to make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers. We'll need theater managers and stage-hands. The Internet is not going to save canned entertainment. The Internet will not work so well if the electricity is on the fritz half the time (or more).

8. We'll have to reorganize the education system. The centralized secondary school systems based on the yellow school bus fleets will not survive the coming decades. The huge investments we have made in these facilities will impede the transition out of them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will be a less-affluent society, we probably won't be able to replace these centralized facilities with smaller and more equitably distributed schools, at least not right away. Personally, I believe that the next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable. And the activity of higher ed itself may engender huge resentment by those foreclosed from it. But anyone who learns to do long division and write a coherent paragraph will be at a great advantage -- and, in any case, will probably out-perform today's average college graduate. One thing for sure: teaching children is not liable to become an obsolete line-of-work, as compared to public relations and sports marketing. Lots to do here, and lots to think about. Get busy, future teachers of America.

9. We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring." Medical training may also have to change as the big universities run into trouble functioning. Doctors of the 21st century will certainly drive fewer German cars, and there will be fewer opportunities in the cosmetic surgery field. Let's hope that we don't slide so far back that we forget the germ theory of disease, or the need to wash our hands, or the fundamentals of pharmaceutical science. Lots to do here for the unsqueamish.

10. Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. You can state categorically that any enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you. An entire social infrastructure of voluntary associations, co-opted by the narcotic of television, needs to be reconstructed. Local institutions for care of the helpless will have to be organized. Local politics will be much more meaningful as state governments and federal agencies slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs here for local heroes.

So, that's the task list for now. Forgive me if I left things out. Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances.

My first stab at journo blogging

Afternoon all,

As you'll all no doubt recall, part of my original intention of this blog, besides keeping your insatiable appetite for pictures and news of your good self satisfied, was to have some kind forum and virtual space to write, discuss and talk about a whole range of issues revolving around politics, international affairs, history, green issues and technology (to name but a few).

As things have played out, this isn't really going to be happening with this site - I just don't have enough people reading, commenting or getting involved for it to work. With this in mind, I've started writing for this blog called The Weekend Economist. I've only written one article so far, on the snowballing of the issue of climate change in the political and social landscape, but why not go check it out (its #33 The Green Avalanche).

Of course, if you have any suggestions, do stick them in the comments section!

The Blue Mountains

So, I decided to take Monday off work and me, Dave and my house mate Emilie went up to the Blue Mountains, to a small town called Katoomba, about 100 odd miles in land from Sydney. For those of you who are into your wintersports, these might be a little too small to qualify as bonafide 'mountains', but there still pretty big, and really stunningly beautiful with the bush and rainforest stretching off as far as you can see into the distance. They get their name from the distinctive blue haze that you can see (perhaps not so well in the pictures mind) - this apparently comes from an ultra fine mist of oils given off by the eucalyptus trees. Pretty amazing stuff! Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures, it was certainly great to get out of the city and do some more 'travelling' again!

Will Gore Run?

As I've said before, I'm consistently impressed with the breadth and quality of the journalism on Rolling Stone. I'd really like to recommend you have a quick read of this article, arguing why Al Gore should run for President, and why he can win.

I'll confess, I'm a complete US politics junkie these days - I just can't get enough of it right now, we're watching history being made and really, at the risk of sounding overly grandiose, we're at a critical moment in our global civilisation, the make or break. What happens in the US of A over the next two years will have huge and momentous implications for the entire planet.

I'd agree with the article that Gore is essentially biding his time at this stage; indeed, it makes sense for him to stay out of the traditional political scrum, because he's staked himself out as both the established political player and the maverick outside. Let the other Democrat hopefuls knock each other into a stalemate, and then sweep up the votes. On a national level, I think there are some real analogies to the Schwarzenegger story actually; both of them have now created for themselves formidable personal platforms which they can, very quickly, convert into meaningful political clout. Hell, just imagine if Gore win's the Oscar he's up for!

Al, if you're reading this, do it; go for it, a whole lotta people world wide are behind you ;)

Hey there

Hi everyone,

Sorry I've been a bit slack with the posting of late - things have been fairly crazy and turbulent this end of the world. Things have settled down a little bit now though, so I'm going to try to get back into writing this a bit more - even though I'm not entirely convinced anyone is reading it! (If you are, this is your cue to add comments so I know your out there).

So, let the blogging continue.